By Canadian Press

Florida man is executed for the 1997 killing of a couple whose toddler witnessed the attack

Feb 14, 2025 | 9:38 PM

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing a husband and wife at a remote farm as the couple’s toddler looked on was put to death Thursday in the state’s first execution of the year.

James Dennis Ford, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison. He was convicted of the murders of Gregory Malnory, 25, and his wife Kimberly, 26, who were killed during a 1997 fishing trip at a sod farm in southwest Charlotte County where court records showed both men worked.

Ford had nothing to say Thursday evening to about 25 witnesses gathered to watch the execution. He was strapped on a gurney as the three-drug injection began, at first his chest heaving and then slowly nothing more. A few minutes later a staffer shook him and yelled “Ford! Ford!” to see if he was still conscious. There was no response.

At the time of the killings, the couple’s 22-month-old daughter witnessed the attack while strapped in a seat in the family’s open pickup truck. She survived an 18-hour ordeal before workers came upon the crime scene and found the girl covered in her mother’s blood and suffering from numerous insect bites, according to investigators.

The daughter, Maranda Malnory, recently told Fort Myers television station WBBH that she had no recollection of what had happened and only remembers her parents through photos and the memories of others. “I told one of my grandmas the other day you grieve the people you knew,” she said. “But I grieve what could have been.”

Ford’s execution was the first in Florida in 2025. One person was put to death in 2024, down from six in 2023, when Gov. Ron DeSantis was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. During the previous three years, the governor didn’t sign off on any executions. He signed Ford’s death warrant in January.

Also Thursday evening, a man who murdered his strip club manager and another man, then later prompted a massive lockdown of the state prison system, was scheduled to be executed in Texas.

Court documents show Ford attacked Gregory Malnory after the group arrived to go fishing, shooting him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, beating him with an axe-like blunt instrument and finally slitting his throat. Kimberly Malnory was beaten, raped and then shot with the same rifle, authorities had said.

Ford initially told investigators that the Malnorys were alive when he left them to go hunting, suggesting someone else killed them. Prosecutors said in a court filing that there was “overwhelming proof that Ford was responsible for the murders and the rape.”

The rifle was found later in a ditch near where Ford’s truck had run out of gas and prosecutors presented DNA evidence at his trial connecting him to both slayings. The jury voted 11-1 to recommend the death penalty in the killings, to which the trial judge agreed.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ford’s final appeal Wednesday without comment.

Ford’s lawyers had filed numerous appeals since his sentencing, all unsuccessful. Recently the Florida Supreme Court rejected claims that his IQ of about 65 at the time of the murders put him in an intellectually disabled category with a mental age then of about 14 — therefore ineligible for execution, court documents show.

The court noted that only defendants whose chronological age was under 18 at the time of a crime can be ineligible for the death penalty “and because Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, it was “impossible for him to demonstrate that he falls within the ages of exemption.”

It’s not clear from court records why these killings happened. Part of Ford’s defense was that he suffered from abuse as a child and became an alcoholic like his father, drinking about a case of beer a day along with liquor. He also suffered from untreated diabetes, sometimes leading to blackouts and erratic behavior.

At trial, Ford also was convicted of sexual battery with a firearm and child abuse..

Curt Anderson, The Associated Press